After a dismal winter, spring is nearly upon us, and everything is coming up roses at JCPenney.

That, at least, is the message some investors expect to hear from CEO Ron Johnson Wednesday — despite forecasts that the flailing retailer will report a fourth-quarter loss on what could be the worst sales drop in its history.

When Penney reports its results, Wall Street analysts forecast a loss, with sales down 24 percent to $4.1 billion, but many industry watchers estimate Penney’s comparable sales will plunge by upward of 30 percent.

The “good news,” according to insiders, is that the former Apple exec lately has goosed business by doing something he has repeatedly said he wouldn’t — advertising temporary sales events.

“He’s doing a total 180 on everything he stood for last year — and it’s working,” according to one New York investor who recently bulked up on Penney shares after placing repeated, lucrative bets last year that they’d fall.

Indeed, chatter last week that sales trends have improved month-to-date sent Penney shares on a three-day rally, leaving them 14.7 percent higher, at $22.47, on Friday — their highest closing since early November.

Anecdotal evidence that Johnson is flip-flopping: Penney’s nationwide newspaper insert for Presidents Day weekend, which blared the word “sale” 37 times over 24 pages, says Dan Hess, CEO of Merchant Forecast, a New York-based retail consultant.

Likewise, Johnson has juiced business this month by comparing Penney’s prices to those on what it claims are comparable items at other stores.

The practice, critics say, bears a likeness to what Johnson last year had condemned: comparing Penney’s pricing to “fake prices,” or suggested retail markups, to make them look lower.

“We don’t like the way they’re telling investors one thing and doing another in their stores,” Hess said.

Nevertheless, “they’ll have an asterisk where they’ll say, ‘However, since we began putting in our comparative-pricing strategy, our sales trend has improved,’” Hess said.

To be sure, year-over-year sales comparisons got a lot easier beginning this month, which marks the one-year anniversary of Johnson’s disastrous “fair and square” pricing policy that sent shoppers fleeing as it eliminated coupons and markdowns. Last year’s first-quarter same-store sales dropped 19 percent.

Accordingly, some investors are holding out hopes that Penney will say its February sales are down only modestly from a year earlier — or possibly even flat.

“If [Johnson] gets up there and says, ‘February is off to a great start,’ or ‘We’re flat,’ or ‘closing in on flat,’ or ‘close to flat,’ that’s all that matters,” according to one Penney shareholder. “He’ll say, ‘The fourth quarter was really bad, but that was a different company.’”

A year ago, Johnson was upbeat after Penney swung to a fourth-quarter loss amid slumping sales.

“While 2011 was a year of transition at JCPenney, 2012 will be a year of transformation,” Johnson said in a statement this time last year.